It was really one of those days when you don’t want to be outside – a late spring day on the Colorado Plateau.  With a cold front sliding by to the north, winds were a constant 45mph and gusting in the 60s.  Yet, the sun was still out.  Every loose particle of dust from Barstow to Albuquerque was on the move.  I was driving near Page, Arizona so I thought the shelter of Antelope Canyon would be a good place to hide out for a while.

There had been a tour group going through, so another photographer and I just stayed back a ways.  The sun only has a few minutes each day to pinpoint its way through the narrow opening of the canyon.  As it did on this particular day, the wind gusts were picking up nearby sand and depositing it in the canyon.  In the three exposures I took, I can see the movement of the shaft of light.  I also had to blow sand off my lens between exposures.  Mostly, we were thankful the tour group did not return at this moment.

I was using a large format film camera, with slow film, and the aperture stopped down for depth of field.  Even though this is the brightest light I have ever seen in Antelope Canyon, that all translates to long exposure.  Similar to long exposures of moving water, it took several seconds for the swirling dust to fill the shaft of light.  Had today’s digital cameras been around back then, I could have taken this with a higher ISO and lower f-stop and perhaps captured this as Peter Lik did in his “Phantom”.  Some of you may recognize this location from “Phantom” – a work that Peter Lik supposedly sold for $6.5 million.

This has been my second best selling print, but if someone wants it in a wall sized b&w, I would close the edition and let it go for a mere million.

For this week’s Daily Post Challenge of Shine